Billions More for Iraq and Afghanistan and Other News from the Senate

In late June, the Senate approved $162 billion more in spending for the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. This brings the spending for Iraq to over $650 billion, and another $200 billion in Afghanistan. We could feed every starving person, treat every person with AIDS, provide insurance for every child in America with $850 billion dollars. What are we spending it on?

War. A war that has caused many soldiers to be placed on antidepressents, more than ever before, just to stand the strain. A war that resulted in 120 suicides among returning vets last year.

A war that was based on lies, and is accomplishing nothing.

However, the Senate fell one vote short of those needed to approve a bill that the House had already passed that would have not cut payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients. The decision about whether Medicare is going to pay doctors less to treat our senior citizens is going to have to wait, even though the actual 10.6% decrease in payment goes into effect this Tuesday. That's really going to help our senior citizens (and that means people in their 60's with plenty of life left,) get good treatment, isn't it?

According to the report, "Some of the roughly 600,000 doctors who treat Medicare patients have said they would be reluctant to take on new elderly and disabled patients if the reimbursement cut takes effect. "

I bet.

Most Republicans senators voted against it,and of course the insurance companies strongly opposed it, while pharmacists, rural hospitals and ambulance providers strongly favored it.

Home mortgage and electronic surveillance legislation was also put on hold until after the July break.

The home mortgage legislations would allow the government to back, not provide as a handout, but back, $300 billion in less expensive loans for people who are facing bankruptcy. This would be money that would be paid back, unlike all the money that has gone into the war. However, Senator John Ensign wants to add $8 billion dollars worth of tax incentives for companies that produce renewable energy to the bill, and that is bogging things down. Renewable energy, after all, in controversial and not as important as war, and facing a surge of homeless people is not worth giving up tax money.

The tax bill that didn't get passed yet would give legal immunity to those telecommunications companites that helped wiretap American citizen's phone and computer lines without consulting the courts after 9/11, and would also make it easier for the government to continue to do so in the case of anyone they choose to call a "suspected terrorist." That bill has already passed the House.

What does all this say about our priorities as a country? Franklin Roosevelt said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Many religions and philosophies stress the immense power of belief.

When we pour billions of dollars into war but won't help out our own people who need homes and medical care, when we even consider legislation that gives the government carte blanche to spy on us without any legal restraint, we are operating from a fear-based belief, and as long as we do that, we are victims, because we choose to allow this to happen.

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